The most stressful part of the trip for Sunny Brous came when she had to part with her wheelchair so the flight crew could put it in the luggage hold. You just never know what shape it will be in when you get it back, she said.

“I tell them, ‘Take the best care of it you can,’” she said. “Those wheels are my legs! Those wheels are my life.”

Brous, 38, who lives in Hico, Texas, was one of dozens of women who converged on the Sea Crest Beach Resort on Cape Cod in Massachusetts toward the end of summer for the gathering of a club no one really wanted to be a member of: women diagnosed in their 20s and early 30s with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

The terminal neurodegenerative disorder robs them of the ability to talk, walk, use their hands or even breathe. It has long been seen as

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